


There's Nothing Low in Love

by AKA_47



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 13:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9273293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: Whether in times of trouble or of happiness they always turn to each other.





	

She occupied too much of his thoughts. Try as William might to stop his mind drifting to the Queen, she lingered. She affected him too much; her moods, her smiles, her tears. He wanted her to be happy, and he wanted to be the one to make her so. And for so long he had gotten his wish. How radiant Queen Victoria was when her Lord M came into the room, all flushed and vibrant. How could he help but return her smile when she looked at him that way? Like he was the reason for her brilliance? It had been foolish to indulge himself in that way, he knew. After all, it had led to his current self-imposed exile, and without his Queen, William felt that the sun had disappeared entirely. He told himself that she was fine, that she didn't need him, that she would find another to occupy her time, one who she could smile at and who would return her smile because he had every right to. And if it would hurt him, then it was nothing compared to the knowledge that she was truly happy.

Or so he told himself, until the day he received an urgent summons to the palace. The Queen was inconsolable they said, she would see no one. The rumors had already begun. He tried not to feel panic. He tried to keep his heart from seizing. He tried not to take her pain as though it were his own. He barely suppressed the urge to run down the winding halls of Buckingham, to pound on the door until she opened. But William had spent years perfecting his public persona, his coolness, his unflappability, In the end, he managed to walk calmly to the door and after a pause that made his heart constrict, Queen Victoria agreed to see him.

"Lord M," her hand shook as she held it out to him. He peered up at her as discreetly as he could manage as he bent to kiss it. She was pale, and her eyes were rimmed in bright red. From the hoarseness of her voice he could only guess that she had just ceased crying. "I hope you were not called here." She spoke as one who knew that he had been, so he did not bother to lie.

"I only wanted to see that you were well, Ma'am."

The Queen nodded to the seat across from her and he took it, gazing at her expectantly.  
"I am, Lord M, in any sense that the doctors would care about." She cast her eyes down to her lap where her hands were clasped.

William raised an eyebrow, "and in any sense that I would care about, Ma'am?"

Victoria's lips quirked in a sad smile that faltered to a frown in the next moment. When she met his eyes, he saw that hers were misty. How badly he wanted to take hold of her hands. His fingers twitched with the impulse, but he stayed it. "I wonder if you might help me to answer a question, Lord M."

"Anything, Ma'am."

Her eyes fell again, and William felt his heart plummet to the pit of his stomach.

"You see, I am quite vexed, and I have been trying to puzzle it out on my own for some hours now, but I am quite unable to. I have had no one to ask, what with your sudden departure."

Much as he wished that she wouldn't look at him then, she did, and he saw her pain vividly, as though it were his own echoed back to him. "I do apologize, Ma'am," he said, feeling a fraud at the inadequacy of the statement.

"I hope that I can still trust you to keep my confidence, Lord M, after your long absence."

"Always," the word was a whisper, perhaps even just a heartbeat, but she heard it all the same.

"My question, then." She bit her lip. "I was only wondering why men find it necessary to be so very cruel."

William felt his breath stolen from him. "Are we speaking of my absence, Ma'am, because I assure you--" the words were clawed from his throat rather than spoken, and he prayed that they were speaking of his negligence as opposed to some stranger's unknown offense.

Victoria held up a hand to quiet him. "That has caused me some confusion, Lord M, but no, I fear that it is an altogether different cruelty I speak of."

"What... May I ask what happened, Ma'am?" It wasn't his place to demand, much as he might want to. It wasn't even his place to react.

"As I have burdened you with my query I suppose I must tell you now. I think, Lord M, that I am right in supposing that you will not judge my actions too harshly?"

"You are beyond reproach, Ma'am."

She laughed then, a cold, hard sound that chilled him. "We shall see. I must confess that the story begins with you. I was angry with you for abandoning me--no, I must speak truthfully. I was angry that it should be so easy for you to do so, when it pained me to be without you."

"Your Majesty, if I gave you that impression then I have masked my true feelings most profoundly." He should not have said it, but the blush on her cheeks was enough to make him feel glad that he did. 

"Nevertheless. I felt that I must have offended you by speaking as I did about the possibility of having...companions, that I may have made it too plain that I wished such a fate for us. Or else that you thought me foolish and incapable."

William felt his heart pound. He did not like the direction of this story at all, but he worked to keep his expression neutral. "Any man who would be offended by such a proposition, Ma'am, has no sense at all, and anyone who would think you incapable of anything is doubly foolish." 

Victoria gave a little sigh of a laugh. "This is why you must stay with me, Lord M, to keep me sensible."

"Gladly."

Victoria brushed her hands across her skirts nervously. "However right or wrong I may have been, I decided to act, whether to...punish you," she admitted, looking at him shyly through her lashes, "or to show you that you had been wrong."

William gripped the arm of his chair. "Your Majesty, I am no one. To act on my account on anything is," he swallowed, searching for the words, "I wish that you wouldn't."

It seemed she couldn't control the tears any longer, they flowed down her cheeks, each one a bullet in his chest. "you are everything, Lord M, everything to me." She reached across the gulf between him, clutching his hand. He looked down at her small, unblemished fingers, young and fragile and choosing him for comfort. It was too much, her words were too much, and yet as always, nowhere near enough.

What would he have done if she were an ordinary woman? Hold her, press his lips to hers, profess his love. But this was his Queen, and Lord Melbourne was mute. He could only squeeze her hand, hoping it was enough to convey that he felt the same.

"I do not want to marry, Lord M. To be with a man for the sake of the country, to give up whatever I have left of myself for duty alone, to be some breeding cow, I cannot. But I do not want to be alone. I have lived my entire life alone, and I do not wish it now. I thought perhaps that I was ready. I had one of my ladies invite him up to my room after I had left, with the greatest discretion you see. No one saw him come, we made sure of that."

He could see it clearly as if he had been in the room. She would have stood not so far from where they sat now, ringing her hands, small and vulnerable despite the title, despite the crown. Victoria could be so convinced that no one thought her a woman. Perhaps she had felt she'd stood on the precipice of becoming one, that this nameless man could bring her there. If she had been hoping to evoke jealousy, she had hit her mark. William felt it rising in him in time with his terror at where this story would end. For surely, whatever this man had done, it had not been to the Queen's satisfaction. If she had asked him up to her room instead…

She kept wiping at her cheeks, speaking methodically now, as though reciting from a script. He could no longer be sure what his expression conveyed. He did not have the energy to guard it.  
"Who, Ma'am?" He did not want to know, yet he heard himself ask. He wasn't at all sure what he would do with the answer, commit murder most probably.

Victoria shook her head violently. "I can't. No one knows and it will stay that way. A man, it does not matter who."

He shouted at her in his mind, that it did matter, it mattered most intensely. Right now, it seemed about the only thing in the world that did matter to him, next to what cruelty he had performed against the Queen. He raged in his mind, but outwardly he stayed silent.

"But when he came to my room I found that I could not follow through with the plan. I was wrong--I was not ready. I begged him go. He was angry with me. He called me such vile things. He grabbed hold of my wrists."

Victoria pulled her hand out of his grip, plucking at her sleeve to reveal her slender wrist marred with the dark imprint of fingerprints. William's stomach churned. These hands, which he held with such reverence, which he would gladly die rather than do any harm to, someone had caused them pain. It was unthinkable. He stood up abruptly, startling her.

"Oh, Lord M," she implored, misreading his anger. "I regretted it as soon as I had made the choice, but what was I to do?"

The Queen was the most precious thing in William's life, the one person he longed to share his secrets with. She owned his heart without asking, held in her palms; a war-battered, weathered thing in such a delicate case. He'd fought against keeping her love, though he suspected that he guarded at least some of it all the same. But the truth was, whatever his inclination, whatever their mutual feelings, he could not tell her that he wished that she would have waited for him, chosen him. She could not have asked it. He could not have accepted if she had. He had no right to his jealousy, and she could hold no obligation to his broken heart. It was a delicate game they played, a balance they had maybe not quite perfected. He wanted to tell her so many things, but in the end, he could not.

"There was nothing," William said, softly. "You are not responsible for his actions. Did he leave after that, Ma'am?" His lids seemed to fall of their own accord as he said the words, praying that her answer would be yes. 

"Almost. It seems foolish to dwell on it, Lord M, when things could have been so much worse, but he kissed me, rather roughly, I think."

William's eyes flashed open. It was not foolish, not at all. "How dare he?!" he shouted. She squeaked in fright. She shook like a leaf. His soul begged for it to stop. He could not bear it.

William dropped to his knees. His hand hovering over hers, not quite touching. He could still see the marks on her wrists. They made him sick. They made him want to take her in his arms. "I'm sorry, Ma'am. I didn't mean to frighten you."

She shook her head. "No, Lord M, I don't believe you did. But that man, he did. Why? Why do men wish to hurt women? To hurt me? All my life I have been pushed and pulled to and fro, mistreated, unloved, and I wonder, Lord M, is it men? Or is it me?"

Victoria let out a sob, her chest heaving as the tears spilled unchecked. "Why is it so hard to love me?" she gasped, wrapping her arms tight around her middle. 

William could stop himself no longer. There was not even the usual voice in his head that told him to keep his feelings in check. He reached for the Queen, pressing her sobbing form against his chest. His hand went to her hair, smoothing it over and over, his lips grazing her cheek.

"I have tried not to love you," he whispered against her skin. "I have tried every day and yet I find it quite impossible. I could more easily learn to live without air. It is not hard to love you, Victoria, it is the easiest thing I have ever done."

It was insolent. It should have been wrong. But it was not.

She buried her face in his collar, her breath warm on his skin. "I would never hurt you," he vowed. "No one will hurt you again."

"You won't leave, will you Lord M?" She asked, not bothering to move away from him. "You'll stay with me?"

"For as long as you'll have me." No matter what she said, William knew that the Queen would marry one day, not out of duty, but out of love. She would want more than he could possibly give her, this prime minister secretly in love with his Queen. He knew that one day she would have no use for him, but he had been foolish to think that he could force the break. As with so many things between them, she must be the one to choose when they would separate. Because she was his Queen. Because she had his love.

"But not as my companion." He could feel her flush, imagined the pink of her cheeks as she said it. She was so young. Just a girl, really. 

William sighed. He guided her gently back from him so that he could look at her more easily. "I think that, in time, you would find that a mistake, but you will have me, as the man who loves you."

"And later? When I know that it would not be a mistake, when I am quite sure that it is what I want?” she asked.

"If anyone could convince me, Ma'am, it would be you. You can be quite persuasive. But for now, we can be two people who are there for each other, so that we always know there is someone in the world who loves us. Will that do?" He smirked at her. 

"If I may ask one small favor...William."

"And what might that be?"

"I had never been kissed before and I should hate to think of that as my only experience with the act. Might you, as the man who loves me, show me what it's supposed to be like?" She licked her lips as though imagining his own there. He watched her, mesmerized.

William had thought himself quite sensible, if not in his naïve youth, then in his later, much more jaded, years. Then he had kissed the hand of a beautiful young Queen, who changed everything. In this moment, he could not deny her, or himself, any longer.  
"It would be an honor," he said finally, leaning in to press his mouth to hers. Slowly, gently, he kissed her. She relaxed into him like she belonged there, like they had been kissing each other all of their lives, and like they would do so for the rest of their days. 

It may have been a delusion, or the promise of the future. For now, it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I am incapable of writing without melodrama it seems, but however ridiculous, I hope that you enjoyed (and leave comments if so inclined).


End file.
